SOME GAINS OF THE WAR

_An Address to the Royal Colonial Institute, February 13, 1918_


Our losses in this War continue to be enormous, and we are not yet near
to the end. So it may seem absurd to speak of our gains, of gains that
we have already achieved. But if you will look at the thing in a large
light, I think you will see that it is not absurd.

I do not speak of gains of territory, and prisoners, and booty. It is
true that we have taken from the Germans about a million square miles of
land in Africa, where land is cheap. We have taken more prisoners from
them than they have taken from us, and we have whole parks of German
artillery to set over against the battered and broken remnants of
British field-guns which were exhibited in Berlin--a monument to the
immortal valour of the little old Army. I am speaking rather of gains
which cannot be counted as guns are counted, or measured as land is
measured, but which are none the less real and important.

The Germans have achieved certain great material gains in this War, and
they are fighting now to hold them. If they fail to hold them, the
Germany of the war-lords is ruined. She will have to give up all her
bloated ambitions, to purge and live cleanly, and painfully to
reconstruct her prosperity on a quieter and sounder basis. She will not
do this until she is forced to it by defeat. No doubt there are moderate
and sensible men in Germany, as in other countries; but in Germany they
are without influence, and can do nothing. War is the national industry
of Prussia; Prussia has knit together the several states of the larger